Cookin' up controversy

The seasons collided on Top Chef, with contestants old and new together to dish on the show and answer questions from fans.

Judge Padma Lakshmi spent a lot of time trying to convince the crowd how much she eats. "I have a big appetite. Any minute I have even if it's just 20 minutes or a half an hour, I try and go on the treadmill or I skip rope," she said in earnest. "If you look at season 2, I actually gain weight and then at the middle of the season is when I'm at my heaviest, and then I taper off." Riiiiiight. Where, exactly is she perceiving this weight gain – and are we expected to have noticed it? If she gained weight, then I lost weight. And I did not.

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We learned that there were sore losers. Sandy tried to argue her kicking-off. "How come you take every episode as its own? Cause chefs have a bad day," she pointed out. Answer: "That's the way the show works," said Tom. Which pretty much says it all. And a nice way of saying "we think that maybe you can't cook."

We saw previous winner Harold at his NYC restaurant. How many girls, do you think, pretend they're going to eat there just to catch a glimpse of the cooking cutie in the kitchen? One person who's not: Lee Ann. When a viewer asked if she's dating Harold, she scoffed. "That's ridiculous, no!" Well jeez. A viewer's gotta ask.

Filed under too much information: "They call me hurricane Howie," said Howie. Hung likes both boys and girls. And Sam wants to make love in duck fat. And everyone's in love with him: Even Padma gets asked about him, which must really make her mad because she's so used to being the pretty one.